


About You Now

by sunsetmog



Series: About You Now [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Homeless, Bullying, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:21:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Harry meets Liam, Harry's been on the streets for three weeks and five days, he's down to his last three quid, and he's had his rucksack stolen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About You Now

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago, I started telling this story in email to a very good friend of mine, who at the time needed a story where everyone was terribly sad, and terribly hurt, and then ended up loved. I wrote 3000 words, in all-caps, of a story about Liam and Harry being homeless and together and struggling, and then--via a process that involved meeting Nick, and various other things--finally ended up with them finding a home, and being safe, and getting back in touch with their families. And then I tried to turn it from melodramatic email chat into actual fic, and I did a lot of heartbreaking research into young people on the streets in London, and what boroughs and local authorities were supposed to do when they came across vulnerable young people who didn't have a home, and social work, and teenagers caught in a cycle of abuse, and I ending up writing a _lot_ of this story. But then I got stuck, and it's been many thousands of words in a doc on my laptop for months and months now, and I don't honestly know if it'll ever get finished. It was suggested that I try splitting it up into separate, smaller stories so that it didn't languish forever on my hard drive, so here is the first story, when Harry and Liam meet. 
> 
> Please note that this story contains reference to past, off-screen sexual abuse, bullying, and manipulative behaviours. Harry's Mum's partner is not Robin, but an OMC. Harry is fifteen and Liam is sixteen.

The first time Harry meets Liam, Harry's been on the streets for three weeks and five days, he's down to his last three quid, and he's had his rucksack stolen. 

Harry's sitting on the muddy grass in a square somewhere between Piccadilly and Soho, with his knees drawn up to his chin, when someone sits down next to him and offers him a biscuit. 

"I've seen you around," the boy says. He looks maybe around the same age as Harry—so about fifteen, give or take—and Harry's seen him around a bit over the past couple of weeks, on and off. He's wearing a faded red checked shirt under a dirty puffa jacket, and jeans with holes in the knees, and he's carrying his belongings around in a scruffy, torn twenty-five litre rucksack, of the kind Harry's mum had used to pack up sandwiches and flasks into when she was dragging him and Gemma up hills for walks on Sundays. "Where's your stuff?"

"Gone," Harry stares at the packet of biscuits. They're Tesco Value Nice biscuits, and Harry hasn't had anything even vaguely like a biscuit since he got on the coach to London almost a month ago, with all of his belongings in a rucksack and his money in the pocket of his jeans. 

"Sorry," the boy says, and he presses the biscuits into Harry's dirty hand. "Go on, have some. I just found 50p on the floor outside Whole Foods, so I went all the way down to the Tesco to see what I could get for it."

"Don't you want to keep them for yourself?" Harry is so hungry he could eat that entire packet in one go, without stopping for breath. Sometimes he lets himself think back to the meals his mum made, and the piles of chicken and roast potatoes and vegetables that would turn up on the table every Sunday lunchtime without fail.

"Yes," the boy says. He doesn't steal the biscuits back, even though Harry fully expects him to. "But you look hungrier than me, so."

Harry is so, so hungry. He'd never thought about what it might be like to be truly fucking hungry, but he's starving. He thinks about food all day long, when he wakes up and when he goes to sleep at night. Sometimes he sees food out of the corner of his eye, a mirage of cake and crisps and chocolate and sandwiches and everything else that used to be normal. It all seems a million miles away from here. 

"I'm Liam," the boy says, leaving the packet of biscuits on the ground between them. "I've seen you around a bit. You're new, aren't you?"

"I've been here almost a month," Harry says, and if he sounds defensive then he doesn't care. He's here and it's awful, and he's hungry, and everything in his life is the worst it could ever be. At least here he doesn't get home from school every night to find his mum's boyfriend waiting for him, hands everywhere, one over his mouth to make sure Harry knows never to tell. 

Harry hasn't told, because Tony makes his mum happy, and Harry loves his mum very, very much indeed. His mum doesn't need to know that Tony's threatened to stop paying Gemma's university tuition fees and rent if Harry tells, and she doesn't need to know that Tony's promised to stop paying the mortgage on the house they all live in if Harry doesn't keep his mouth shut. His dad's already gone, and Tony's sworn that no one else will want someone who can't keep a husband. 

His mum doesn't need to know that Tony says she's damaged goods, or that he'll leave her with nothing and no one if Harry tells.

She doesn't need to know that Tony likes to run his hands up the inside of Harry's thighs and make him take his trousers down whenever they're all alone in the house.

"I've been here four months," Liam says, after a pause. Harry watches him dig the toe of his trainer into the mud. "Ish."

"It's rubbish," Harry says, because it is. His scalp itches, and he smells, and it's cold, and his clothes are dirty, and he's hungry, and he's one hundred per cent terrified every second of every day. 

For a second, Liam's face falls. "I know." He drops his gaze down to his knees. "I'm sorry you lost your stuff."

"Doesn't matter," Harry lies. "Less to carry around every day now." The picture of his mum and Gemma had been in that bag. He wishes he still had that. 

"Have another biscuit, really," Liam says. "I don't mind sharing. There's no one to talk to here."

Harry doesn't cry, because sometimes it feels like he hasn't got the capacity to do that anymore. It's like he's all dried up inside, a husk where he used to be life. 

He takes a biscuit, and ekes it out for twenty minutes, once nibble at a time. He doesn't look at how dirty his hands are, or how filthy his nails are, or think about how he's fifteen years old, homeless, and really fucking scared. 

"Have another one," Liam says, after a while. "What made you run away, anyway?"

"Mum's boyfriend." Harry takes another biscuit. "How about you?"

"School," Liam says. "Got tired of getting hit all the time. They were going to fucking kill me, one of these days." He toes at the grass with his trainer. They're even dirtier than Harry's. "Any excuse to put the boot in. If I saw Mum and Dad cry one more time then I was going to chuck myself off the nearest building, so I left." He tries to smile, but it looks watery. 

"Tony used to touch me," Harry says. It feels good to say it out loud. He's been keeping it secret for so long. "When I got home from school, he'd always be there. Every night, just waiting for me. He kept telling Mum he didn't need to get an office, he'd just work from home, but when my sister went to uni it just meant we were always alone. He made me promise not to tell."

"Better off out of there," Liam tells him, and Harry's not entirely sure Liam's telling him the truth. He ducks his head at Harry's stare. "We both are."

Harry wishes he was somewhere else entirely, not here and not there, but if it's a choice, then this wins over Tony.

He looks down at his biscuit, and tries to work out where the next meal's going to come from. 

He's so scared, all of the time. He hates it.

"When was the last time you ate?" Liam asks. 

Liam doesn't seem to mind sitting on the cold, muddy grass next to him. Maybe you get used to it, after a while. Harry's not sure he's ever going to get used to it. He shrugs a shoulder. "Earlier." It's sort of but not quite a lie. He'd eaten the remains of someone's tuna baguette from Pret that morning; they'd left it in the wrapper on top of the bin, and he'd stopped saying no to that two weeks ago. It made him want to throw up, but only a little bit. Mostly it made him not quite so dizzy when he stood up, so overall he's counting it as a win. 

"Because there's a café up near Great Titchfield Street, like, a bit behind Oxford Street. It closes at four thirty, and they always put their rubbish out on the pavement before going home. I don't think they're supposed to, but if you're quick, you can get sandwiches and sometimes cake out of the bags. It's a bit stale, but it's all right."

"Why are you telling me?" No one has given him the time of day in almost a month. He's hungry and disgusting and cold and perpetually damp and horribly, horribly alone.

Liam looks down at his knees. "Dunno," he says. "It's probably stupid. Just thought you—" he stops. "I haven't talked to anyone in ages. Everyone's older. And someone told me some stuff a bit ago to help me, so I thought I'd do the same. I thought you looked—I thought you looked like you might be nice."

There's a pain in Harry's chest that wasn't there a minute ago. "I didn't think it would be this—" he doesn't know how to finish that. Lonely? Isolating? It's stupid. He should have known that running away would involve him being alone, but he hadn't actually thought about what that would actually mean. "Do you find that people don't look at you anymore? It's like—it feels like I'm invisible." He's disappearing; people walk by him like he's a part of the background. 

He wants to scream and shout and yell, _I'm still here. I'm real. Even if you don't look at me, I'm still here_. He wants to bump into people just so that they'll turn around and look at him, if only for a moment. He wants to be real again. 

Liam bumps his elbow into Harry's. "I can still see you," he says. 

Harry drops his chin to his chest. "I didn't think it would be like this." He should be more circumspect; the only things he owns anymore are his secrets. It's been weeks, though, weeks of just him and the inside of his head for company. He hates it. He can't go home and he can't stay here, and there's nowhere else. There's just this. 

"Do you want to come and see if we can get a sandwich?" Liam asks, after a minute. "You don't have to. But, you can. If you want." 

Inexplicably, Harry wants to cry. It's so lonely out here. He nods. "All right."

"Right," Liam says, standing up. He brushes some of the mud off his jeans. "Do you want another biscuit? I'll save the rest for afters."

There's nothing normal left in Harry's life; nothing familiar. He's lost everything. He's fifteen and alone. He's got nowhere to go, and nowhere left to run, and he'd never, ever imagined it being like this.

He takes the biscuit, and stands up. 

~*~

It rains that evening, and Harry and Liam take refuge with their stale sandwiches in a doorway off Great Portland Street, up behind Broadcasting House. Someone else must have had this doorway the night before, because there are already two filthy, cardboard boxes laid out flat. Harry's learnt the hard way that you don't turn down a cardboard box, no matter how filthy and damp it is. 

"If you get really cold," Liam's telling him, once they're squished up into the doorway. They're watching the rain pelt off the pavements and run down the road, and they've finished the sandwiches, "then you should wrap yourself in newspaper under your clothes."

It sounds like the worst thing in the world. Liam's been telling him stuff like this for two hours. It's a crash course in being homeless. Phone boxes are good, too, for sleeping in, but only the old kind that tourists like to take pictures outside. The newer kind have the gap at the bottom, to make it less inviting for homeless people to hide in. Harry's trying to pay attention but it's a lot of information and he's so tired and cold and hungry. Newspaper, though. He can remember that. "Like insulation?"

"Yep, just like that. Just collect the Evening Standard or the Metro every day." Liam huddles into his coat. "Look, you're shivering. Do you want to—" He lifts his arm a bit, in a _don't suppose you want to come closer_ kind of a move. It looks awkward and ill-practiced.

Harry doesn't have a warm enough coat for this. He doesn't want to think about when winter properly kicks in, if he's still here then. He'd thought he'd be warm enough with his jacket because the autumn so far has been long and relatively mild, if wet. He'd been such a kid. He feels like he's aged about fifty years in the last month. He was old enough already, what with Tony and everything. "You don't have to—" Who's Harry kidding. He's cold, and he's wet, and all of his stuff's been stolen already, so what the fuck can possibly go wrong if he just shares someone else's body heat? "Yeah, okay."

Liam hooks his rucksack around his ankle and under his knees, and Harry wishes he'd done that with his bag, rather than waking up in the middle of the night to someone wrestling it out from under his head. "Come on," Liam says, and he holds his arm out so that Harry can sneak under it, pressing himself to Liam's side. 

Liam's coat smells damp, and he's cold and wet. Harry doesn't know what to do with himself; should he shift closer? Hug him? He used to find personal space really easy; he hadn't much cared for it and had made his own rules up, ever since he was a little kid. Tony, though. Tony had changed all that, and Harry stays rigid even as Liam's hand comes to rest on his shoulder, giving him an awkward, _it's going to be okay and we won't pretend I'm telling the truth_ pat on the back as he shifts a little closer. Harry's cheek rubs against Liam's shoulder, Liam's puffa jacket making little crinkly noises as he moves. Harry lets out a breath. 

"You're not going to, like—" Harry doesn't know what to say. He's come to the end of everything. His stuff's gone, he can't get to his family, he's cold and hungry and so, so alone. He's so tired of fighting. He just wants to stay here and give in to it, and be held. "I've got nothing left to steal."

Liam flinches at that. "I'm not a thief," he says. It's the sharpest thing Harry's heard him say. "I don't take stuff that doesn't belong to me."

"I didn't say you did," Harry says. He doesn't want to fight. He's just—he's tired of fighting. He's so close to just giving in. He doesn't move away from Liam's side, even though they're both desperately still, and rigid, and Harry wants to cry. "It's just—nobody's nice to you out here. I'm turning invisible."

"I don't take stuff and I don't hurt people," Liam tells him, after a pause. His voice is low, and it's a bit shaky too. "I'm tired of being alone. That's all it was. I thought you looked nice."

Harry squeezes his eyes shut. He _is_ nice. It's just other people he can't trust. "I have no idea what I'm doing," he says, finally. "I'm scared all the time."

"Me too," Liam says softly. "I'm fucking terrified."

Harry probably shouldn't trust him. He hasn't trusted anyone in a long time, but he's got nothing left to lose, and anyway, Liam doesn't _feel_ dangerous. He probably shouldn't be going on his gut instinct, since he'd liked Tony the first three or four months his mum had been seeing him, but he wants it to be different with Liam. Even if it's just for tonight—even if it's just _now_ —there's someone else here he can talk to, after weeks of being scared shitless and alone. 

"Sorry," Harry says, after a while. 

"I don't hurt people," Liam sounds upset. "I don't do stuff that hurts people."

"Sorry," Harry says again. "I thought you looked nice too. No one else told me where I could get something to eat."

"Maybe we could go again tomorrow. There might be cake tomorrow."

"All right." Harry presses a little closer at that, at a _plan_ , and Liam's arm tightens around his shoulders. 

He falls asleep after a bit. He's cold, and he's damp, but for the first time in forever, Harry doesn't feel quite so much like he's on his own. 

~*~

The following afternoon there's a piece of carrot cake and a squashed chocolate brownie in the bin bag outside the café; Harry and Liam share them, and a stale hummus wrap and a really stale cheese and pickle baguette, sitting in a doorway up by Regent's Park. 

Harry's sure that he should feel some kind of disgust at eating from a bin, but he can't. He's so hungry he doesn't care _where_ the food comes from, or how filthy his hands are. He hadn't packed gloves when he'd left home, and anyway, they would have been in his rucksack when it got nicked. It's going to get properly cold soon, and Harry still has no idea how he's going to keep himself warm when winter really hits. He can't think about it; how to keep himself alive day-to-day isn't anything he's ever had to consider before. 

"It's not raining," Harry says, once they're done eating. He's still hungry. He's always fucking hungry. He could eat it all again, and probably again after that.

"Nope," Liam says. He wipes his fingers on his jeans. "I think it's been raining non-stop for months. I hate the rain. Do you want this last bit of cake?"

"I like it in summer," Harry says, taking the cake. He can see Liam's knees through the rips in his jeans. "When it rains and there's that smell afterwards. I used to—I liked going out then. It smelled interesting."

"Yeah," Liam says. There's an empty Starbucks cup in front of them, on the ground by their feet. Someone drops forty pence in in ten pence pieces as they walk by. Harry wants to see their face to say thank you, but they've already gone, and have probably forgotten Harry and Liam even exist. 

Harry checks his feet to make sure that they're still there, and that he hasn't turned invisible. He hates how this feels. "Do you want to go for a walk?" he says, all of a sudden. He wants to be real again, if only for a bit. "We could go in the park."

Liam freezes, just for a moment. "Not in the park," he says, busying himself with their empty Starbucks cup, tipping the coins out into the palm of his hand. "Let's go somewhere else."

"Fine," Harry says. He doesn't mind where they end up. He just wants to feel the ground beneath his feet and brush his elbow into someone else, just to prove he's still here. 

"Somewhere else," Liam says, gathering his stuff up. "We'll go somewhere else." 

Harry doesn't care where they go, so long as he's real at the end of it. He taps his foot into Liam's filthy trainer. _I'm still here_. 

Liam's hair is dirty under his knitted beanie, but curls sneak out from under his hat. His smile is a little awkward, but his eyes are nice. "We're rich," he says, palm out. Forty pence. 

Time was, Harry would have thrown that away without even noticing. Now he's eking out a life on it, and he can't stop counting. He's really fucking tired of counting.

~*~

It's been over a week since that first time Liam had come over with a packet of biscuits and a hopeful smile. Harry's never found it hard to make friends; he likes people and he always has done. It's only recently that he's come to be scared of them, too. He's apprehensive and tentative, and he knows that's mostly down to Tony. Time was, he would have been hanging all over Liam by now. He'd never been all that bothered by other people's personal space, but now he's so aware of his own personal space, and who's in it, and where they can touch him, that it's kind of fractured outwards so that he doesn't invade other people's, either. 

Liam's still giving him advice. He's still telling him about how to keep warm and which shops you can get food from and where not to sit and which benches belong to which people and where there's somewhere you can get a cup of tea from sometimes. Liam fills conversation gaps with advice lists, and helpful hints and tips, and it's slowly starting to kill Harry. Just for once, Harry wants to pretend that there's more to this life than which doorway they can sleep in, and where the next stale sandwich is going to come from. 

He knows that Liam's just trying to make himself useful, but Harry wishes he'd just _stop_ , just for a minute.

"And if you can get any of those sugar packets, you know the little paper tube things, when they give you your tea then you should take them because sugar's really good, you know? It's good to have."

Harry doesn't let out a ragged, desperate breath because he knows that Liam's clearly trying to make himself indispensable. He's as lonely and miserable as Harry is, more so, maybe, because he's been out here longer. Harry closes his eyes, though, just for a moment. He doesn't know how to get Liam to stop. 

Everything's just the same when he opens them again. 

He watches a group of teenage girls with Frappuccinos from Starbucks all take over the bench on the other side of the road in a rare ten minute slot where it's not raining. They have shopping bags from New Look and Primark and Claire's and Boots. One of the girls has black and white stripy tights on, thick blocks of colour that ring her legs. One of the other girls is wearing a black knitted hat with knitted black mouse ears on; he nudges at Liam's shoulder. "Look at that girl's hat."

"What—is that—she has ears."

Harry bites his lip. "She's wearing a mouse hat."

"That's amazing," Liam says. He bumps his elbow into Harry's. "Do you think they have them in other animals?"

"Like what? Tigers?"

"I don't know. Cats? Rabbits. Floppy ears, you know."

"Elephants," Harry suggests. "Although you'd have a trunk in the middle of your forehead. It would probably look like a knob."

Liam giggles at that, hiding his mouth in his fist. He coughs. "It would. An actual knobhead."

"Which one would you get? If you could pick any animal?"

"Dunno. I always liked dogs. I always wanted a dog of my own."

"Well," Harry says, and he looks across at the girls again, and wishes he could go shopping and hang around and not worry about everything. "Maybe you could get one, someday."

"Yeah," Liam says, and he ducks his head. "What hat would you have? If you could pick?"

The girl in the hat is laughing, mouth wide, eyes bright. He wants to be her. "The mouse," he says, and he really means, _free_. He means, _I want to be a teenager again_. He means, _I want to go home_. "I always wanted to be Iron Man. You know, like—the superhero."

"I know who he is. Iron Man rocks. But you'd pick—the mouse? Because of Iron Man?"

"He does rock. But, like—a mouse is kind of quiet, right? It kind of just... gets away with stuff because it's little, and quiet. I always wanted to be Iron Man, but right now I feel like a mouse." He can't say _Tony Stark_. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to say the word _Tony_ out loud again. 

Liam pulls his knee up to his chest, and rests his chin on the tear in his jeans over his knee. "Elephants are scared of mice," he says, after a while. "I bet elephants aren't scared of Tony Stark."

"I know a joke about an elephant," Harry says. He loves jokes, always has. "Why do elephants have wrinkles?"

"I don't know," Liam says, and the furrow in his brow isn't quite so pronounced, just for a moment. "Why do elephants have wrinkles?"

"Have you ever tried ironing an elephant?" 

"Oh no, Harry."

"I've got another one. What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on him?"

"These are awful," Liam tells him, but those lines round his eyes are laughing lines, and Harry likes those on him, the way his eyes have gone all crinkly. "What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on him?"

"Nothing," Harry says, making his best sad face. "He just let out a little wine."

Liam laughs out loud at that, eye bright. "They're the worst jokes ever."

"I _know_ ," Harry says. "I love them."

Liam bumps his knee into Harry's again. He doesn't move his leg away again, and Harry blushes a bit, looking away. 

"He let out a little _wine_ ," Liam giggles again. Harry's never really heard him laugh before. When he stops, he leans his shoulder into Harry's. "It's Batman, for me. I love Batman."

"Tall, dark, and handsome," Harry says, without really thinking about it. 

Liam shoots him a look. "And brave," he says, without looking away. "Totally fucking brave."

"Yeah," Harry says, softly. "Totally fucking brave." 

It doesn't feel like they're talking about Batman anymore. 

~*~

After a bit, Liam steals the grand total of one pound and thirty-seven pence from the empty Caffe Nero cup they're begging with, and goes to the Sainsbury's to try and find them something to eat. They can get a loaf of value bread for fifty pence, and a jar of value jam—that's mostly water—for twenty-nine pence. On top of that they can have value digestive biscuits (forty-five pence) and a bottle of value lemonade for seventeen pence. They're going to be four pence short, but usually they can make that kind of change up relatively easily. Someone will give them a five pence piece. They have before. Twice before.

Liam leaves Harry behind, their begging cup empty in front of him, and Harry feels cold all the way down to his toes. He wants a blanket, or a bed, or a hug from someone who loves him. He'd settle for enough money to buy peanut butter instead of jam, or bourbon biscuits instead of digestives, or _apples_. He loves apples. He loves bananas more, but they never make enough for fruit. 

It starts to rain about two minutes after Liam leaves, drizzle turning into actual rain after about thirty seconds of _plut-plutting_ in a half-arsed kind of a way. Harry hopes that Liam doesn't get too wet. He concentrates on trying to look like someone passers-by will feel sorry for, so that they'll dig into their pockets for some change. He's learnt fast that people don't give in the rain. They barely give the rest of the time, either, but they never give in the rain, and it won't stop fucking raining. 

Begging is the worst feeling in the world. He hates it. He's so ashamed. Every moment he sits here, he feels like he's letting his mum down. She'd always wanted so much for him and Gemma, and she always taught him that he had to work hard, and try hard, and smile hard, and that life would pay him back for that. 

He hates that she was wrong. 

He wishes there had been another option, a better way of dealing with Tony than just running away. It's easy to sit here in the cold, a couple of hundred miles away, and think that being touched up every day and having to put up with having Tony occasionally wank off over him whilst forcing Harry to stay still was actually all right, in comparison to being hungry and wet and cold and scared all the time. 

But at home, he'd been scared all the time too. He'd just had to hide it, so that his mum never found out. 

And he hates that he's coming to rely on Liam, because Liam's not tied to him. Liam could go at any time, and then he'd be all alone again. Liam could go right now, with the proceeds from an afternoon's begging in the rain, and this could be it. Liam might never come back from the shop. It's difficult, trying to remember that, because Liam's so good to him. Liam gets them the good doorways at night and finds the driest cardboard and the most copies of the free newspapers as blankets. He shares his food and lets Harry curl into his side at night. Harry's good at the begging part, and getting them just enough money so that they don't fall over from hunger, but he's not so good at making sure that they're both still alive and together at the end of each day. 

It's been a week, and Harry knows that he couldn't go back to doing this alone again. 

It's not just that Liam's practical, and strong in a way that Harry isn't. It's not just that it's easy to slide in under his arm every night and fall asleep pressed against his side. It's not even as if they sleep all that much, because they can't ever just let their guard down enough to sleep through. It's more than that. 

And it's not even that Harry's starting to have feelings of the romantic variety towards Liam; it's more that they've fallen, fully-formed, right there into Harry's lap. He doesn't really know if they're reciprocated, if the heavy beat of his heart is echoed in Liam's chest whenever they're pressed together, but he knows that Liam tries to keep him safe and tries to look after him as best he can. He knows that Liam only annoys him by listing the nine hundred ways he knows of making the best out of being on the streets every day because he's trying to be Harry's friend. 

It's more that Harry likes the way that Liam's brows make little u-shapes whenever he frowns, and that his eyes crinkle up at the edges whenever he smiles. He likes Liam's hands, and how big they are, and how safe he feels when Liam wraps him up in a hug. He likes the warm midlands burr to Liam's voice, and how Liam thought Japan was hot all the time like Australia, and how Batman is his favourite. He likes that Liam thinks biscuits are important and that tea is even more important. He likes the way Liam pouts sometimes, his lower lip jutting out, and he likes how much he wants to lean in and press his mouth to Liam's just to make him stop talking about phone boxes and insulation and safety and safe sleeping rough. 

He likes the way he imagines Liam kissing him back. 

Sometimes, when Harry had still been at home and Tony had first started sliding his hand up the inside of Harry's thigh whenever his mum was out of the room, Harry had wondered if it had been his fault, Tony touching him like that. If Tony had been able to tell from looking that Harry liked boys instead of girls. If Tony had known that Harry's first kiss had been aged twelve, with Danny Bletchford, on the school trip to Styal Mill. If Tony had known that Harry wanked off in his bedroom thinking about boys kissing him and touching him under his clothes.

He tries not to think too much about the answer to that. 

Someone drops a twenty pence piece into his cup, and someone else drops a piece of chewing gum on the floor by Harry's foot. He wonders if it was on purpose, if the guy who dropped it saw him sitting on the step and wanted to make it clear how nothing he was , or if he was just invisible to him. He shivers, and doesn't cry. 

He watches the road for Liam's red hat instead, a dirty beanie that he wears all the time. 

_Please come back_ , he thinks. _Please_. 

~*~

Liam's late, and when Harry sees him crossing the road, he thinks his face must show just how worried he was that Liam might not come back. He wishes he wasn't so desperate for Liam to be his friend. It's probably obvious from space how little he wants to be alone anymore.

"You're still here," Liam says, in relief, once he's negotiated the pavement full of damp commuters, all pretending that Harry doesn't exist. Liam stands in front of him for a moment, hopping from foot to foot. He's carrying his rucksack and their bag of food in a carrier bag. 

"Did you think I wouldn't be?" Harry asks, looking up. He's not going to be the one going anywhere, even if Liam's primary method of trying to be his friend is to be Harry's very own version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, always talking in factoids. Gemma had given him a copy for his last birthday, and it was the only book he'd brought with him. It had been in his bag that got nicked. He loved that book. "Where would I go?"

Liam shrugs awkwardly. "I don't know," he says. "I just—I don't know. Anywhere?"

There's a tight feeling in Harry's chest he doesn't know what to do with. "I wouldn't," he says, in a low voice. He shifts on the damp cardboard, making room for Liam to sit down next to him. "You're my friend. Aren't you?"

Liam looks a lot like he wants to cry. He blinks a bit and ducks down into the doorway, next to Harry. "I thought you'd just—I don't know. Go."

Harry shakes his head, tracing a pattern on the filthy knee of his jeans. He's so cold and wet and hungry, but he's not alone, because Liam's here. "Don't want to."

Liam hugs the carrier bag onto his lap. "But—I don't have anything else to tell you. I've run out of useful stuff that you should know."

"I didn't just—that stuff's all great, but—" Harry doesn't know what to say. Liam looks so downcast and alone. "You're my friend," he says, in the end. "Aren't you?"

Liam won't look up. "I don't know how to be anyone's friend," he says, after a minute. "I don't know what to do to make you stay."

"I just—" Harry shrugs his shoulders helplessly. "You're already my friend," he says, and Liam stops hovering and sits down properly, the damp Sainsbury's bag in his lap. "You've been my friend since you gave me a biscuit. I don't know what I would have done without you."

Liam doesn't look up from his lap. "It's been weeks and weeks and weeks," he says, softly. "No one talked to me. I want to go home all the time but I hate it. I hate seeing my mum and dad so scared for me. I hate that I'm such a fucking failure that I—"

"You keep me safe," Harry interrupts. He touches his cold, damp fingers to Liam's wrist. It feels like a much bigger gesture than it is. 

Liam stares down at Harry's fingers. "What do you think the boys who bullied me would have done if they'd known for a fact I was gay? Look at what they did when they just thought I was."

Harry picks his words carefully. "I don't know whether my mum's boyfriend picked me because he knew I was gay before I did, or if, I don't even know, I'm gay because he touched me."

"It's not the second," Liam says. "If you are gay, it's not because of him."

Harry doesn't take his hand away from Liam's wrist. "I am," he says. "But I'm scared anyway."

"I'm always scared," Liam tells him, and very, very tentatively, he laces his fingers with Harry's. "But it's easier now that I've got you."

Harry just nods, once, then twice. "Yeah," he says, and the rain doesn't stop, and there isn't suddenly a magical way he can go home again, or fix things for Liam, but he stays holding on nevertheless, leaning his cheek against Liam's shoulder and squeezing his hand. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, after a while. 

Liam leans his cheek against Harry's dirty knitted hat. "Me neither," he says, voice rough, and Harry might wish he was somewhere—anywhere—but here, but if he does, he wishes Liam was there with him too.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I'm ever going to properly finish this story (sorry sorry) but here is an overview of what happens in the rest of the plot: [tumblr](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/164342639993/for-the-writer-ask-meme-1-you-started-a). Thanks, guys <3


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